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canopic jug writes:

Neurobiologist and Open Access proponent Björn Brembs has an article, Reliable novelty: New should not trump true, in PLoS about the quality of scientific journals, both new and old.

Although a case can be made for rewarding scientists for risky, novel science rather than for incremental, reliable science, novelty without reliability ceases to be science. The currently available evidence suggests that the most prestigious journals are no better at detecting unreliable science than other journals. In fact, some of the most convincing studies show a negative correlation, with the most prestigious journals publishing the least reliable science. With the credibility of science increasingly under siege, how much longer can we afford to reward novelty at the expense of reliability? Here, I argue for replacing the legacy journals with a modern information infrastructure that is governed by scholars. This infrastructure would allow renewed focus on scientific reliability, with improved sort, filter, and discovery functionalities, at massive cost savings. If these savings were invested in additional infrastructure for research data and scientific code and/or software, scientific reliability would receive additional support, and funding woes—for, e.g., biological databases—would be a concern of the past.

[...] There is a growing body of evidence against our subjective notion of more prestigious journals publishing "better" science. In fact, the most prestigious journals may be publishing the least reliable science. Therefore, it may not be pure coincidence that, in the fields in which the hierarchy of journals is playing an outsize role in rewarding scholars, the replication of scientific findings, or the lack thereof, is receiving more and more attention. Abandoning the expensive anachronism of journals may not only allow us to regain control over the important scholarly communications infrastructure and refocus it towards reliability, but it will also free sufficient funds to implement current technologies that will service our research data and scientific code and/or software such that, e.g., biological databases would never face money-related closures again. Funders may play an important role in the transition from the legacy to the modern system in that they could require the institutions of grant applicants to join the modern system before any applications are reviewed (i.e., a "Plan I", for infrastructure).

[We have had stories on Open Access journals before. What, if anything, is new here? --Ed.]

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